Note 2 — Chapter III · CAMP LIFE AND WORK AT ZIMBABWE
Reading edition
About two miles from our camp there was a long flat granite rock, along which the path passed. On either side of this are two piles of stones, and a line is scratched on the rock between them. Our guides each took a stone, scratched them along the line, and deposited them on the heap opposite. On returning in the evening they did exactly the same thing, and we were told that it is a luck sign, which they do on undertaking a journey to ensure them from danger by the way. It was a very lovely ride, past huge granite boulders, and hills covered with dense foliage, beneath which the women of a village danced for us to the tune of their drum, forming one of the wildest, weirdest pictures we had ever seen. On another occasion we rode to a fortified rock, which had been long since abandoned; but the rude stone walls had been constructed by a more recent race, and compared with certain ruined villages we afterwards saw in Mangwendi’s country.2 On our homeward ride we turned aside to rest in a hut where we found natives busily employed in making beer, a process which they always carry out in the fields, where they have their stores, and in cooking locusts, which we tasted and thought not altogether unlike shrimps.